True dat. It’s one of my pet peeves in action movies. I bitched about it after seeing the James Bond movie, SPECTRE. Bond just spent the last hour or so, slaughtering henchmen left & right, and then when he finally has the drop on the Big Bad, he walks away, leaving him to be arrested by the same agencies he has already proved he has complete control over!

Is “super-strong” a universal power among abductees? I was under the impression that different people got different things, like Dina and Joe’s smarts or Robin’s speed.

…though it’s later established Robin’s power was a custom order, and it’d make since for Big Boss to put all the strong people on the mission teams and keep the smart people at HQ, so I probably answered my own question.

I think there’s a basic level of enhanced strength, durability, and agility that everyone gets, and then individuals may get more of that, and/or may get more unique abilities instead or as well. Sal and Walky are well-rounded combat machines, Beef just gets extra helpings of strength and durability, Robin has her superspeed, Joyce has the physics engine in her head that lets her use her jetpack effectively, Joe has tinkering powers, Jim has this Tasmanian Devil thing…

And not everybody necessarily got the same number of build points. Joyce has flight, but doesn’t seem particularly weaker in other areas than the run of the mill non-flying abductee. Jim on the other hand has kind of a crappy special ability that he seems to have paid for out of general stat points, because he can be punched out by a badass normal.

And then it seems that there are mental limiters on the abductees’ ability to use their powers. It actually appears to be part of SEMME’s plan to traumatize at least selected abductees to the point that they have Heroic BSODs and the limiters come off. This may explain some of their apparent institutional incompetence.

“Did you hear that, Sal? We’re going to take you down! Please don’t take this opportunity to prepare for our attack, which you know about because we’re talking about it right next to you. That would be unsporting.”